


A Sip of Sorcery

by cookinguptales



Category: Sleep No More - Punchdrunk
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:43:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Magic. He's not sure if it's an addiction or a life sentence. Possibly, considering the source, it's both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sip of Sorcery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [icandrawamoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icandrawamoth/gifts).



Sometimes the Porter thought of the days before he'd known the taste of magic. Days when he'd been able to go about his duties with a whistle and a smile and eyes that had not yet gone dull. Days that seemed separate, discrete, which didn't run into todays and todays and todays stretching on into eternity.

Life had been quieter then. He'd been ignorant, but he'd been happy. And then he'd tasted the tang of magic on another man's tongue.

He'd seemed exciting then, stumbling into his lobby with hair askew and eyes that shone with a color that he had no word for. They'd locked eyes, and the man had moved towards him, liquid grace poured over the jerk of a puppet's dance. They'd breathed each other's air, and in a moment, he'd known he was breathing in something fey. He could taste memories in that air, hopes and dreams and regrets, a song that seemed to vibrate against his skin in pale mockery of a caress, but there was something else. Something spicy that bit at his tongue, made him lick his lips in fear and anticipation.

He could still remember the way the man's eyes, fire and ash, had followed the movement. The way he'd smiled, sharp as broken glass, and stepped in. He would never forget the way his lips felt as they pressed against his own with nothing like gentleness.

He wished he could forget the way they'd tasted.

The man had slipped his tongue between his lips, but he'd slipped something else in as well. And even as sweat-slick hands ran down his arms and teased at his sides, he'd been given his first taste of magic.

It burned. He could feel it stinging the inside of his skin and running down his throat. It burned away the last of his innocence, and worse, it burned away his ignorance. It burned away every extraneous part of himself, his hope and his name and everything that was not necessary to his role in a play he'd only just realized was well underway. He'd tried to pull away, but the man had simply laughed, a startlingly ugly sound, and bitten at his lips.

A lifetime later, or maybe just a moment, the man had finally pulled away, leaving him slumped against the desk and scorched through. His lips had tingled, and he no longer had the ability to lie to himself, could not pretend that it was simply desire that sparked inside his blood.

The man had watched him that night with the countenance of a cat playing with something small and weak, and then, with a smile that was all teeth and blood and rimmed with madness, he'd turned. Sauntered away.

That had been the last time he'd woken up to a new day. The novelty of a life still lived wore away, and today stretched into eternity.

Every day he wondered if perhaps, perhaps he was simply imagining it all, but every day he was forced to discard that idea as hopelessly optimistic. He could still taste it, after all, the bright tang of magic resting on the back of his tongue. It ate away at him, and then had the temerity to fill that empty space with more of itself. There was a fire behind his ribs now, and he would have believed that it had taken the place of his heart if he could not still feel that pain, needles lancing through his bloodstream, with every beat. He hated the man. He loved him. And despite himself, he craved him. There was something wordless within him that he had _put there_ that called to its maker. 

He had come back. Oh, he had come back. But not alone. The Porter watched them carefully, a glance in the looking glass over his left shoulder, and the sudden, sure knowledge burned. They were witches, the lot of them. Power rolled off them, roiled within them, and he recognized it for what it was. It was magic, black magic, that flowed in his veins now.

He could finally see. The haze through which he lived his life had been burned away, and now he was forced to see things for what they were. The endless cycle of the predator and the prey. The witch, the Boy Witch's, eyes caught his and the expression in them was knowing. It was such an ugly expression to be marring such a beautiful face.

It would have been easy to hate him. So easy. The Porter could feel the strings of magic, intangible but unbreakable all the same, reaching between them. Marking him. Tethering him with poisoned threads that stung what they touched. But there was something else in that husk of a person as well: a seemingly infinite well of despair.

That first night, that second meeting, the Porter had caught a glimpse of it. It hovered there, a faraway voice suspended on dust, as the witch sang. To him? To whom?

He still didn't know whether it was the magic, that tainted burn beneath his skin, that drew him to the witch or if it was that bone-deep sadness. He wanted to calm him, and he wanted to consume him. He wanted to hold him tight and suck him dry. Caress his hair and then yank it out.

Whatever he wanted, he could not have it. The witch shoved him away, rough and almost uncaring. Almost. That glimpse of despair was still there, a quiet longing, a sigh of regret and a whisper of an apology.

Every day, every today, every tomorrow, every yesterday, he was treated to another taste of that soul. It was the only break in the monotony; the rest of the world was still bound to the same events, the same catastrophes, the same pointless struggle against a plan not his own. But the witch, his soul was overfull. It was alternately cold disdain and brittle loneliness, brash anger and quiet agony. The magic in it called to him, a sharp nostalgia of things yet to come, but so too did the pain.

No matter what he did, the Porter could still taste his magic, bubbling up fro that gaping reservoir deep inside him. And still, even after a lifetime of todays, he still had no words for the color of his eyes.


End file.
